Arnold Schwarzenegger admits his new movie Sabotage is a homage to brutal
films but claims that removing violence from movies would not decrease
violence in society

Arnold Schwarzenegger has defended "brutal violence" in movies ahead of his new film Sabotage, in which the 66-year-old plays the head of a special unit of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) whose members are viciously killed and mutilated after a cartel bust.

Schwarzenegger, the former Governor of California, said: "It's a bit of an homage to the films that I grew up on, and directors like Brian De Palma, and Walter Hill and Sam Peckinpah who made very brutal kind of masculine movies. I think violence is political now: 'maybe if there is no violence in movies, there will be no violence in the world.' I don't believe that. The video games our children play are much, much more violent than anything in this movie."

Director David Ayer, who made End of Watch and wrote the screenplays for The Fast and the Furious, Training Day and S.W.A.T., says that Schwarzenegger's role as a character called Breacher allowed the former bodybuilder to show a more tender character. "It's showing a new version of Arnold," the 45-year-old director told AFP. "Here is a man who's had this long famous career, and starred in many successful movies and then to have the opportunity to really work with him as a creative actor and to draw new things out of him was a wonderful challenge."

"When we got together, David had a whole list of things that he wanted me to do," says Schwarzenegger. "I love that he pushed me, because sometimes directors get intimidated when they meet someone like me."

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"I've never played a character like this. My characters are usually black and white, I'm the good guy and there are the bad guys, then with a little bit of humour throughout the movie and that's it," he said.

Schwarzenegger returned to the big screen after leaving office as governor of California in 2011, making two Expendables movies followed by The Last Stand and Escape Plan last year.

He has four other films in the works, including a return to the cyborg role which made him famous in Terminator: Genesis, due out next year.

"People love to see him as strong men, a leader, with the gun fights and action. I delivered that but it's also seeing him in a new way, with soul, heart, with sadness and complexity," said Ayer.

For the Austrian-born actor, it meant having to forget some old habits. "There was the weapons training and I said, 'Why do I need weapons training? I mean, I've shot more guns than anyone in movie history. I've killed more people than anyone so why do we need to go through weapons training?' He said, 'Go down to the LA SWAT team and you have to figure this out. I want you to learn the ballet of this team'."

The former bodybuilder compared it to training in a gym, constantly repeating exercises to get better. "I think all of this preparation that he suggested was fantastic," he said.